Red in the Blue
by 3cheersforidiots
Summary: Hermione Granger has to make her biggest decision yet when she chooses a faction at her Choosing Ceremony. It's a hard task to do, but she will choose as her heart desires. And she will deal with the consequences. Chapter 2 in progress, rated T because, well, I think it's easy to guess why.


**A/N: Written for the UBC II.  
Prompt: Either Hunger Games!AU, Divergent!AU, Matched!AU or Percy Jackson!AU, at least 800 words.**

 **Disclaimer: The characters belong to J.K. Rowling, the universe though belongs to Veronica Roth. I have no income out of this writing, except for maybe improving as a writer through experience.**

 **Enjoi!**

It was time for her Choosing Ceremony, and Hermione Granger was absolutely not ready.

I don't mean physically, because her mother made sure that she was wearing the best outfit she could find in her wardrobe, and also somehow the most fitting for the occasion, and for once, she did feel pretty.

No, the problem was with her mind, or her heart really, whichever you prefer. And quite literally, at that.

She expected the aptitude test to go smooth, where she would have gotten the results, which would have been correct as they always are, she would have had an easy way of choosing the faction she got, and she would have been happy there. That was what she imagined, at least.

But of course, fate is not fair enough to just let one live a boring life without any complications and big decisions to be made. And at this point, fate was so unfair that it made Hermione take the hard route.

She was told that she was Divergent, and that she was dangerous to the society she lived in, simply because she had aptitude for not one, but two factions. She thought, if they made such a fuss about her, then she couldn't even imagine what would happen to somebody who could be in three, four, or even all five factions.

It kind of frightened her, at first. She didn't do anything out of ordinary, outside of being Divergent, so she wouldn't get arrested, or made factionless, right? That wouldn't really be fair, since she tried to be at the top of her grades and she tried to act as mature as she could at all times.

Then, it also angered her. Why would it be a problem is somebody had multiple dominant personality traits? They aren't bad people just because of that. And after all, was there anything wrong with diversity? Isn't it good if nobody's the same? Shouldn't it be that way?

Amd then, it worried her again. Because it didn't solve her problem. She would have to choose a faction nevertheless, and with the newfound knowledge she had, it was especially hard to decide.

She, of course, had the option to be a Erudite. She was born there, she knew of every process that one had to go through if they wanted to be recognized as an official citizen, her parents lived there, she grew up here, she had friends here, though not many, and it was the safe choice for all she knew.

But then again, she was told that he could be a Dauntless too. Apparently, she was brave enough, and there was so much she didn't know about the other factions yet. She wanted to learn everthing she could, and she would have to experience it to fully understand. And it all seemed strangely exciting. She was the annoying bookworm for 16 years of her life, wouldn't it be nice to show everyone that she was more than that, once and for all?

The question was, was she brave enough? And most of all, would it be worthy enough? And those were questions she couldn't simply answer, because she didn't know. She couldn't have possibly known.

The process seemed simple enough, just hold your hand over the the symbol of your preferred faction, drop your blood, and there you go. You have chosen a path to go down on.

But it was much more complicated than that in practice.

Hermione was sitting there, in the middle of the Erudite bunch in her plain blue dress, and she watched as all the kids her age chose a faction.

She watched as people she knew chose a faction. For example, Terry Boot and Anthony Goldstein. She knew them pretty well, she talked with them a couple of times, and sometimes they studied together. And they both decided to stay. She guessed they chose the easy way out. Then again, she also watched as some people turned their backs on their faction of origin, like Lavender Brown, born Dauntless, who chose Amity. It must have been a hard choice to make, she thought.

Finally though, she was called, and as collected as one could be when making probaly the most important decision if their life, Hermione walked down and stood in front of the symbols.

 _It's now or never, I guess._

Which path will she choose? Will she go with the familiar route, where she would live her life safely, and just like she imagined? She would complete her training, get an honorable job where all her knowledge would pay off, find someone she liked, probably have children, and then that's it. It all sounded pretty ad ideal, but who am I kidding? It also sounded boring as hell.

Or she could choose to live in the moment a bit more, and venture into the unknown. Maybe she would have a boring enough life there too, but probably not as dull as she would have it Erudite. And let's face it, she was a sixteen year old teenage girl, even if she was mature for her age. And everybody wants excitement and just to be out of ordinary at this point in their life.

And that was the point when she decided. She didn't know if she would regret her choice later, she couldn't see into the future at this point, but her all-too-cliché side won this time, and she held her hand out over the sizzling coal that represented the Dauntless faction. She took a peak at the Erudites while she did so, and she was surprised to see her parents smiling, while almost everybody seemed to be in a much more shocked state. Maybe they knew even before she did. Her family did know her well enough, after all. Maybe they knew that she was brave deep down, brave enough to differ. She couldn't help but smile back. Her? In Dauntless? It was preposterous, but she couldn't care less as she walked over to her newfound peers.

She watched the remainder of the Ceremony after that. There were some surprises, like Neville Longbottom, who chose Amity over Candor, Susan Bones choosing Abnegation instead of Amity, or the Patil twins from Amity, with Parvati joining Hermione and the Dauntless lot, and Padma going to Erudite.

But there were also things that didn't break any havoc, like Harry Potter and Ron Weasley both staying loyal to Dauntless, or Draco Malfoy choosing Erudite. Hermione knew that git too, and she wouldn't have expected anything else. Of course he would be too much of a coward to not do as his father ordered him to. And Lucius would obviously want him to stay true to the family's traditions. The Malfoys were from Erudite, and they stayed there too. Sometimes Hermione wondered why was it a disgrace if somebody strayed away from their origins, but she let them be after a while. Her parents weren't from Erudite, they were from Candor and Dauntless, respectively, so Malfoy and his followers called her a fake from time to time, but she ignored them. She had nothing to do with them, and they would eventually stop, she thought.

From what she knew, this phenomenon wasn't restricted to only Erudite, she have heard about those kind of families in practically every faction, and though she didn't agree with it, because it was practically judging somebody for something they couldn't do one thing about, she knew there was only so much she could do. Sadly, you couldn't simply go and tell a group of racists to not be racists anymore without being called out for no reason.

So, she just waited for the Ceremony to end. And when it did, she had to realize that she will have to run. Like, quite fast, even though she still had a dress on. At this point, she cursed herself for trying to be pretty instead of convenient at the worst possible point of time, but followed suit anyway, and ran down the stairs until she reached the railway with the others.

There, she only had so much time to get a grip on herself before the train arrived. She knew that these vehicles never stopped, only occasionally slowed down a bit, so she prepared herself for the chase, while repeating the phrase _now or never_ in her head. She pretty much knew that if she didn't have any kind of mantra in her head to say over and over again, she wouldn't make it.

With that, she quickly prepared herself when she sighted the train, started to run at her highest speed, and threw herself in.

After she calmed her quite speedy breathing down, she proceeded to look around a bit, maybe she would see a few familiar faces, and maybe she would go and talk to those familiar faces for a bit. She did see a few ex-Erudites, and of course she knew them by face and name, but then she realized that she never shared more than a few sentences with either of them, so she thought the better of it, and decided to instead take a look at the others. She saw a few Candors around her, maybe three or four, none of them whom she knew that well. She found two Amity boys quietly talking a corner, but no Abnegations this time. It wasn't surprising after all, it was pretty rare to see Abnegations choose Dauntless anyway. And finally, she tried to memorize every born Dauntless she saw. She knew some of them too, but she had to come to the realization that she no one was on this train with her whom she would just go and talk to. She, though not in the literal sense of the ord, was alone.

 _This will be one heck of an experience_ , she thought as the train neared the Dauntless headquarters.

 **A/N: Reviews are always appreciated and cherished, hope you enjoyed!**

 **(This was meant to be a one-shot, but I might continue, if anybody's interested. Just sayin'.)**


End file.
